Friday, July 25, 2008

again, he "forgets" to mention Alexa -- 5th paragraph-- (something they used to do all the time when things were truly going well...) as I've said before, absolute numbers are not the relevant metric (you would expect them to grow as more people go online etc.) How has craigslist been doing relative to other sites gives a much more accurate image of what's really going on: craigslist's Alexa rank has gone down significantly since I started checking it in 2006 (7th at its best, 12th at its worth; it does fluctuate a bit, of course, -- it is 11th at this point -- , for instance, but that does not change the fact that it's been a definite downward spiral... from 7th to 11th, assuming it's not going to go back to 12th and lower... -- I doubt it...).

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

I hope that after this little (apparently unintended) experiment, you will walk away with a much less naive notion of what craigslist is all about. I didn't give your letter much importance when I first saw it (although your suggestions were not bad, your characterization of what craigslist is and does sounded way to groupie-like to take seriously). I *am* pleased to see that it has gained some traction (other articles and people, such as Jay Rosen, mention it) and I hope it will be a learning experience for a lot of people.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Although this was no at all what he asked people for when he turned for profit (he just asked if he could charge to pay the bills), you'd think at the kind of profits they've been racking in, he's made enough off of craigslist to retire a long time ago if he just wanted a regular retirement (like he implies) and..."a little bit more"... (last sentence)

Delia

P.S. at one point I really thought these guys were great... (Voice of America); now they sound like idiots... (doing little more than repeating the ridiculous PR Craig feeds them) D.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

MORE: anonymous bellow sort of got the idea, although he is a bit confused as to what really matters -- it's NOT the size of the place, it's achieving critical mass *in a particular location* (having extremely few ads pre-charging shows it's nowhere near critical mass).

re: "Right now in Boston and Chicago, you only have half a page of jobs up. And that isn't even accurate since focus groups and egg donations aren't jobs, those should be gigs. So really, you have very few job ads up. Now imagine if you charged a fee in Denver or Houston. You would probably only have a couple of ads up right now, since those cities are so much smaller. If there's only a handful of jobs posted a day, your readers are going to go elsewhere, and with no readers, your employers are going to go elsewhere."(anonymous craigslist poster)